Jimmy Carter, the son of a farmer from the era of the Great Depression, is set to mark his 100th birthday this Tuesday. This makes him the first former US president to live for a full century, further showcasing his ability to baffle expectations. This trait has been exemplified not just in his tenure as the 39th president of the US from 1977 to 1981 but also in his journey from running his family’s peanut farming business to becoming a globally celebrated humanitarian and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Despite being in home-based hospice care for the past 19 months in Plains, Georgia, Carter’s ceaseless efforts towards advocating for democracy and upholding human rights continue. Alongside his long-term companion and wife, Rosalynn, who passed away last year, he established The Carter Center in 1982. For the last four decades, the organization has been committed to ‘waging peace, combating diseases and fostering hope’.
As the centenarian’s birthday approaches, his grandson and Chair of The Carter Center’s governing board, Jason Carter, emphasized the significance of the occasion. He says a century-long life, especially one that has had such vast positive impact on globally significant issues, is indeed a moment to celebrate. The last 19 months have provided the family time to reminisce and cherish Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy, something the entire world holds in high regard.
Jimmy Carter, who was born on 1st October 1924, has spent over 80 years of his life in Plains, Georgia. He plans to commemorate his landmark birthday in the single-storey home he and Rosalynn built back in the 1960s, before his first-ever political campaign for the Georgia state Senate.
Previous month, The Carter Center put together a music-filled event in Atlanta to fete the ex-president, with a myriad of artists performing, some of who had campaigned alongside him in 1976.
The occasion managed to garner in excess of $1.2 million in donations for the institution’s initiatives, and Georgia Public Broadcasting is set to air it on the upcoming Tuesday.
Despite surviving a cancer prognosis at the age of 90, several subsequent falls, and a hip replacement in his late 90s, Carter announced at 98 that he planned to enter palliative care.
Residents of Plains have coordinated another musical performance for Tuesday evening.
Carter was last viewed in a public setting nearly a year back, choosing to utilise a reclining wheelchair to be present at his wife’s pair of memorial services.
Appearing frail but silent, he occupied the front row in Atlanta’s Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, accompanied by their four offspring, all the living former first ladies, current President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, and ex-president Bill Clinton.
Jason Carter revealed that the former president, who was born four years post the official enfranchisement of women and forty years before black women practically started exercising this right, was keen to vote in the prospective 2024 presidential election — his preferred candidate being vice-president Kamala Harris. If elected, she would be the inaugural female, the second person of African ancestry, and the first person of South Asian heritage to occupy the Oval Office.